---
title: "It Takes Two to Start a Movement"
description: "What Derek Sivers' first follower can teach us about early adopters, better technology, and how Semmax helped shape LipwigMetrics."
date: "2026-10-06T12:00:00"
canonical_url: "https://brehnorcomms.com/articles/it-takes-two-to-start-a-movement"
md_url: "https://brehnorcomms.com/articles/it-takes-two-to-start-a-movement.md"
last_updated: "2026-10-06T12:00:00"
---

# It Takes Two to Start a Movement

In 2010, Derek Sivers gave a three-minute TED Talk called ["How to Start a Movement"](https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement).

The footage is simple. A man dances alone at a music festival. He is fully committed, but to everyone sitting nearby, he looks a little ridiculous.

Then one person gets up and joins him.

Sivers calls that person the "first follower." The founder or inventor usually gets the credit for going first, but an idea and a movement are not the same thing. The first follower changes how everyone else sees what is happening. One person doing something unusual becomes two people doing something together.

Then a third person joins. Soon, the people still sitting down are the ones missing out.

As Sivers puts it, "The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader."

That lesson applies to new technology as much as it does to dancing on a hillside.

## Going First Is Only Half the Story

We like stories about founders and inventors. It takes conviction to see a problem, build something new, and say there is a better way.

The early adopter makes a different bet. They look past the comfort of a familiar process and decide the problem is worth solving.

Choosing an established product carries little personal risk. Nobody has to defend Microsoft 365, Salesforce, or ChatGPT. Millions of other people have already made the same choice.

An early adopter has less social proof to rely on. They have to judge the idea, the people behind it, and the value of solving the problem. That takes confidence and good judgment.

## Early Adopters Help Make Products Useful

An early adopter does more than validate an idea. They reveal what happens when it meets real work.

You can research a problem, map workflows, build prototypes, and test every scenario you can imagine. Then someone uses the product in the course of an ordinary workday.

They ask a question you had not considered. They skip the feature you expected them to use. They need something that seemed unimportant during development.

That feedback is not a detour. It is how a promising idea becomes a useful product.

At Brehnor Communications, we have seen this across technology projects, digital platforms, and new ways of working. The people closest to the work notice details that no development team can reproduce from the outside.

The best early adopters become partners in refinement. Their experience helps make the product clearer, more practical, and easier for the next customer to adopt.

## LipwigMetrics Found Its First Follower

LipwigMetrics began with a familiar problem inside financial advisory firms.

Firms generate valuable data about prospects, appointments, marketing, advisor activity, and production. Yet many still assemble leadership reporting in spreadsheets drawn from several different systems.

Spreadsheets are useful. The trouble starts when a growing firm depends on a reporting process that has accumulated around them. People enter information differently. Reports have to be rebuilt and reconciled. Historical comparisons become harder. A simple question about firm performance can require several files and a great deal of manual checking.

Brehnor Communications built LipwigMetrics to give that process a proper home. The platform brings key performance information together in a reporting system designed for financial advisory firms.

Building the software was the first step. A firm still had to use it in the normal course of business.

Semmax Financial Group became that firm.

Semmax gave Brehnor Communications something we could not create inside a development environment: the perspective of people relying on the platform to understand their business.

Their experience helped answer practical questions. How do people enter information during the workday? Which reports matter most to leadership? Where does the workflow need to be simpler? Which questions should the system make easier to answer?

Those lessons continue to shape LipwigMetrics. Semmax did more than adopt the platform. Their use helped make it better for the firms that follow.

## Adoption Is a Business Problem

The pace of technology has made this lesson more relevant. New software and AI tools appear every week. Many are impressive in a demonstration. Far fewer become part of how a business actually operates.

The technology is often not the hardest part. Adoption is.

A new tool has to fit the work people already do, solve a problem they recognize, and earn their trust. That requires more than software. It requires listening, implementation, and a willingness to adapt the product to what happens in practice.

Not every new idea deserves a first follower. Some should disappear. But when an idea solves a real problem, the first customer can influence far more than their own implementation. They challenge assumptions, expose weaknesses, and make the path easier for the next customer.

## Someone Still Has to Stand Up

At the end of Sivers' video, the hillside is full of people. By then, joining is easy.

The important moment came earlier, when one person watched someone dancing alone and decided to stand up.

We remember the person who started dancing. We should also remember the person who made it easier for everyone else to join.

If your advisory firm has outgrown the reporting process built around its spreadsheets, [talk with Brehnor Communications about LipwigMetrics](/lipwigmetrics). You can start by showing us how you track performance today.